Chinese script

Not as easy as it looks

A character-forming development

FOR better or worse, Mao Zedong usually came out on top, whether facing Japanese invaders, nationalist warlords or Communist Party rivals. But for all his success in overturning traditional values and institutions, the founder of modern China came up short in his desire to convert written Chinese from its character-based system to an alphabet. Intellectuals resisted fiercely, some out of the belief that China's writing system was superior to any other, and unified a land of many dialects far better than a phonetic system, others on simple sentimental grounds.

Many claimed it could not be done, despite the examples of Korea, which managed the trick in the 15th century, and Vietnam which, like China, has a tonal language with many homonyms but switched successfully to an alphabetic system. In the end Mao settled on a halfway step: cutting the number of strokes in some Chinese characters (from 18 to four in the case of feng, which means “abundant”, and is shown above). This set China apart from Hong Kong, Taiwan and most overseas communities. Many purists thought simplifying characters as appalling as eliminating them.

That fierce debate is now being rekindled with the government's announcement of plans to issue later this year a new list of character modifications, aimed mainly at correcting certain “oversimplifications” undertaken in the past. Some characters will have more strokes added and thus be brought closer to their earlier, more complicated forms. But officials insist the move does not mark the start of a campaign to scrap simplified characters. China, they say, need not move back toward the traditional forms, nor further along the path of simplification. It simply needs to “standardise” things.

This will disappoint Pan Qinglin, a member of the consultative committee that advises China's government. In March he submitted a proposal to the government calling for a return within ten years to the greater expressiveness and “artistic quality” of the traditional script. Others, however, will be pleased, including the internet commentator who recently compared reviving traditional characters to “asking women to revive the practice of foot-binding”.

Other arguments focus less on deep issues of cultural identity than on practical concerns, such as how hard the new forms will be to learn, how much it will cost to convert signs, replace textbooks and adapt software, and whether the government will pay for the changes. Mao famously argued that “revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture”. It might, however, be reforming orthography.